Twitter said earlier that the employee deactivated the account on their last day of work. The company said Friday that it had "implemented safeguards" in response to the incident, but declines to share details about its security precautions.

"The discovery highlights a difficult issue for Twitter, as well as other technology companies that rely on large amounts of contract workers to handle sensitive work," the Times wrote.

Hundreds of employees have the capability to delete the accounts of accounts belonging to users the company refers to as "very important tweeters" or VITs, according to the Times report.

Twitter did not respond to an emailed request for comment. The company said on Twitter that it was conducting an investigation into the deletion of the president's account. The official @POTUS account was not deleted.